{"id":524981,"date":"2010-04-12T17:57:10","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T21:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/climateprogress.org\/?p=22875"},"modified":"2010-04-12T17:57:10","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T21:57:10","slug":"is-masters-champion-phil-mickelson-unwittingly-helping-exxonmobil-greenwash-its-anti-science-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/524981","title":{"rendered":"Is Masters champion Phil Mickelson unwittingly helping ExxonMobil greenwash its anti-science record?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m interested in your thoughts on how much greenwashing this is on a scale of 1 to 10.<\/em><\/p>\n

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I watch pretty much every major golf tournament.\u00a0 And that means that I saw some great golf played this weekend at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, especially by the winner, Phil Mickelson.<\/p>\n

It also means I saw some heart-warming\/green-washing commercials pitching the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy, which is “designed to provide third- through fifth-grade teachers with the knowledge and skills necessary to motivate students to pursue careers in science and math.”\u00a0 ExxonMobil explains the rationale:<\/p>\n

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Today, in fields like medicine, computing and energy, the U.S. needs more brilliant young minds than ever before. Yet, as the need for brainpower grows, the number of our nation\u2019s young people pursuing careers in these areas is decreasing.\u00a0 Fortunately, we believe this trend can be reversed, which is why we partnered with professional golfer Phil Mickelson and his wife Amy….<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes, the second-biggest fossil-fuel funder of anti-science disinformation<\/a>, ExxonMobil, whose goal is to convince the public that scientists and the scientific method cannot be trusted<\/strong>, is worried that young people don’t want to pursue science as a career.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Now, Mickelson is, by appearances and almost all press accounts, a very decent guy (although hagiography is rampant in every sport, including, as we now know, golf).\u00a0 I suspect he has no clue what ExxonMobil has been doing to help create a hostile climate for science and scientists.<\/p>\n

So, Phil, in the exceedingly unlikely event you read this, it would appear your Academy is designed in part to help us forget that country\u2019s biggest oil company has funneled millions of dollars<\/a> to fund the disinformation campaigns of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, all of which continue to advance anti-scientific attacks as I have detailed recently (see posts on Heritage<\/a> and CEI<\/a> and AEI<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Chris Mooney wrote an excellent piece on ExxonMobil<\/a>\u2019s two-decade anti-scientific campaign a few years ago.\u00a0 Mooney notes that one anti-science disinformer, Paul Driessen, a senior fellow with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($252,000 from ExxonMobil) and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise ($40,000 in 2003), said in 2005 that he\u2019s \u201cheartened that ExxonMobil and a couple of other groups have stood up and said, \u2018this is not science<\/strong>.\u2019 \u201d\u00a0 That’s the kind of science education ExxonMobil has been funding for a decade.<\/p>\n

A 2007 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report looked at ExxonMobil\u2019s tobacco industry-like tactics in pushing anti-scientific global warming disinformation (see \u201cToday We Have a Planet That\u2019s Smoking!\u201d<\/a>).\u00a0 Like the tobacco industry, ExxonMobil’s goal is to undercut real science and replace it with their phony science<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The oil giant said it would stop, but that was just another lie (see \u201cAnother ExxonMobil deceit: They are still funding climate science deniers despite public pledge<\/a>\u201c).\u00a0 Mickelson <\/em>should read this excellent commentary by award-winning journalist, Eric Pooley, \u201cExxon Works Up New Recipe for Frying the Planet<\/a>.\u201c<\/p>\n

ExxonMobil’s funding of virulently anti-science fanatics, carried to its ‘logical’ extreme by the extremists who the disinformation campaign is aimed at, leads to McCarthyism or worse:<\/p>\n